While the Indian and Pakistani cricketing establishments were involved in the latest chapter of their long-running soap opera about their March 19 Twenty20 match, something quite remarkable was happening at the stately Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai. Thursday was the fifth day of the annual Irani Cup, contested between the Ranji Trophy champions, Mumbai, and a team comprising Rest of India.
Mumbai were coming off a spectacular Ranji season where they had motored to a record 41st title. Hence after winning the toss on the first day, March 6, and deciding to bat, there was an assuredness about the way they set about things. Their top six all posted scores above 50 – Suryakumar Yadav and Jay Bista scoring 156 and 104 respectively – enabling Mumbai to finish their first innings on a daunting 603. In cricketing terms, the Rest of India’s bowlers were hammered on the first and second days.
Mumbai’s game to lose
In the longer version of the game, captains swear by the strategy of putting a huge total on the board in the first innings. The thinking is that the sheer magnitude of runs will invariably overwhelm the team batting second. Things seemed to be progressing in that direction here too. Batting in their first innings, the Rest of India were bowled out for 306. This was a respectable score but, in the context of the match, not quite enough. Rest of India were a yawning 297 runs short of Mumbai’s score. For all intents and purposes, Rest of India were staring down the barrel.
Thus when Mumbai walked back at the end of Day 3, they would have not worried too much about the loss of one wicket. They had only played one over of their second innings and the score read 2/1. They led by 299 runs and going by how they had batted the entire season, they could have been forgiven for believing that their 17th Irani Cup title, their first since 1998, was not too far away.
Rest of India claw back
But things went a little awry on the fourth day. In the first over of the day, Shreyas Iyer, Mumbai’s highest run-getter of the entire season, was dismissed cheaply. A few overs later, their centurion from the first innings, Jay Bista also lost his wicket, and Mumbai’s score read 42/3. Rest of India were mounting one last comeback. Only four Mumbai batsmen got into double figures as the opposing team’s bowlers found the finesse they were lacking in the first innings. Perhaps Mumbai were guilty of being a little reckless, but could they really be faulted? Despite bowling Mumbai out for 182, Rest of India still faced an arduous task – chasing down a mammoth 482.
The fifth day dawned with Rest of India requiring 380 runs to win with nine wickets in hand. Going for a draw seemed to be the best possible option. And as Faiz Fazal and Sudip Chatterjee carried on sedately till lunch, that seemed the likeliest result. The equation at lunch read: 269 runs required with a minimum of 62 overs to be played.
But Chatterjee’s wicket, just minutes before lunch, changed the proceedings. Ironically, it was his own team that benefitted. Karnataka’s Karun Nair came in for Rest of India and changed the tempo of the innings. As Fazal found his way to a well-composed century, Nair thumped the bowling to all parts of the ground, altering the complexion of the game.
An incredible chase
Mumbai were rattled. With less than 200 runs to go, they started resorting to negative bowling to stem the flow of runs. There was to be another twist – both Fazal and then Nair, after a fluent 92, were dismissed in quick succession. Naman Ojha was also run-out, and all of a sudden, Rest of India found themselves five wickets down with still another 128 runs left.
Domestic cricket can often be boring, but this time, it was fascinating to watch. Despite being five wickets down, Rest of India’s next batsman Stuart Binny launched a brilliant counter-attack. In a flurry of boundaries and sixes, Binny took the game completely out of Mumbai’s hands, creaming 54 off just 51 balls. Yet again Mumbai struck back by dismissing him, but it was too late. Binny had done his job by then. Rest of India knocked off the remaining runs in the dying moments of the match and celebrated an amazing win. After conceding 603 runs in their first innings, they had just pulled off the third highest successful run chase in Indian first-class cricket history.
Without doubt, it brought an end to one of the most fascinating contests seen in Indian first-class cricket. The longer version of the game is often dismissed as being out of place in the modern world, but this was a perfect advertisement for the format – a keenly fought game where one team were on the verge of being comprehensively thrashed, but somehow found a way to claw back and win. For any cricket purist, it was a remarkable game – all five days of it. And it proved yet again that for all the Twenty20 action, it is still the longest format that provides the most compelling entertainment.